dirty crowd in the upper gallery; and among the crowd, in the
boxes and in the front rows, were some forty of the _real_ people.
And to those oases Vronsky at once directed his attention, and
with them he entered at once into relation.

The act was over when he went in, and so he did not go straight
to his brother's box, but going up to the first row of stalls
stopped at the footlights with Serpuhovskoy, who, standing with
one knee raised and his heel on the footlights, caught sight of
him in the distance and beckoned to him, smiling.

Vronsky had not yet seen Anna. He purposely avoided looking in
her direction. But he knew by the direction of people's eyes
where she was. He looked round discreetly, but he was not
seeking her; expecting the worst, his eyes sought for Alexey
Alexandrovitch. To his relief Alexey Alexandrovitch was not in
the theater that evening.

"How little of the military man there is left in you!"
Serpuhovskoy was saying to him. "A diplomat, an artist,
something of that sort, one would say."

"Yes, it was like going back home when I put on a black coat,"
answered Vronsky, smiling and slowly taking out his opera glass.

"Well, I'll own I envy you there. When I come back from abroad
and put on this," he touched his epaulets, "I regret my
freedom."

Serpuhovskoy had long given up all hope of Vronsky's career, but
he liked him as before, and was now particularly cordial to him.

"What a pity you were not in time for the first act!"

Vronsky, listening with one ear, moved his opera glass from the
stalls and scanned the boxes. Near a lady in a turban and a bald
old man, who seemed to wave angrily in the moving opera glass,
Vronsky suddenly caught sight of Anna's head, proud, strikingly
beautiful, and smiling in the frame of lace. She was in the
fifth box, twenty paces from him. She was sitting in front, and
slightly turning, was saying something to Yashvin. The setting
of her head on her handsome, broad shoulders, and the restrained
excitement and brilliance of her eyes and her whole face reminded
him of her just as he had seen her at the ball in Moscow. But he
felt utterly different towards her beauty now. In his feeling
for her now there was no element of mystery, and so her beauty,
though it attracted him even more intensely than before, gave him
now a sense of injury. She was not looking in his direction, but
Vronsky felt that she had seen him already.

When Vronsky turned the